Govt to upgrade houses of the poor

Fri, 09/12/2008 10:47 AM | City

TANGERANG: The Tangerang regency administration agreed to renovate 400 houses belonging to low-income residents to improve their quality of life, said a local planning official Thursday.

"We have allocated Rp 5 billion (US$526,000) from the annual budget to renovate 300 houses. Funds to renovate another 100 houses comes from the central government," said Bunyamin Davnie, head of the regency's development planning body.

He said renovation costs for each house would average between Rp 15 and 17 million. The central government allocation would help finance less extensive renovation work averaging Rp 5 million for each residence.

The administration began its program to renovate low-income housing in 2005. In 2007 the program was put on hold by the Supreme Audit Agency because of unsupervised fund management.

"We are now resuming the program because many residents are still living in badly deteriorating houses which they'll never be able to repair themselves because they're very poor," Bunyamin said.

The target houses, he said, were wooden houses with dirt floors and traditional walls made of woven bamboo. The government program would upgrade them to brick structures. --JP

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